This pool report was marked 'urgent'

Editor's note: On Jan. 21, 2009, President Barack Obama's first full day in office, Tampa Bay Times reporter Wes Allison served as one of the pool reporters for the White House press corps, which meant he covered all the president's events and shared reports about them for the rest of the news media.

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Late in the day, he and the other pool reporters were summoned into the White House Map Room for an unannounced event. Pool reports are typically short and mundane. This one was marked "urgent."

We reprint it in its original form with misspellings, shorthand, lowercase names, etc. It was written with some speed.

From: Wes Allison

Sent: Wed Jan 21 19:57:03 2009

Subject: Pool rpt 7 - urgent

At 735 pm, Roberts administred the oath of office again to obama in the map room. Robert gibbs said the wh counsel, greg craig, believes the oath was fine Tuesday, but one word was out of sequence so they did this out of a "an abundance of caution."

"We decided it was so much fun..." Obama joked while sitting on a couch.

Obama stood and walked over to make small talk with pool as roberts donned his black robe.

"Are you ready to take the oath?" Roberts asked.

"I am, and we're going to do it very slowly," obama replied.

Oath took 25 seconds.

After a flawless recitation, roberts smiled and said, "congratulations, again."

Obama said, "thank you, sir."

Smattering of applause.

"All right." Obama said. "The bad news for the pool is there's 12 more balls."